The notion of privilege, an unearned advantage relative to and perhaps
at the expense of others, first arose in the context of class and racism
in America. In 1920, sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois observed how “the
discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s peoples is a very
modern thing” (Du Bois, 2005). In 1935, he further noted that whiteness
functioned to divide the interests of the working class against itself:
that low-paid white laborers received a “public and psychological wage”
for their complicity in inequity. They were given access to public
functions, parks, and good schools; they populated the ranks of the
police and could participate in civil society. And while the latter “had
small effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their
personal treatment and the deference shown them” (Du Bois, 1995:
700–701). Decades later, in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., responded to
those that asked him to delay and temper (nonviolent) protests for civil
rights. In a “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King (1963) wrote that
extremism for love and justice could not be delayed because,
“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give
up their privileges voluntarily.” Although, King’s usage was more
general, in 1967 socialist writers Noel Ignatin and Ted Allen returned
to the class consciousness of Du Bois, amplifying and repeating his
concern in such a way as to make the wage and privilege of whiteness a
more purposeful and strategic move between the U.S. ruling class and the
“misleaders” of American labor: as a reward for helping “conquer the
world and enslave the non-white majority of the earth’s laboring force”
white workers would receive “the material and spiritual privileges
befitting your white skin” (Ignatin and Allen, 2011: 149–150).

Du Bois’ notion, now wedded to the term privilege, was extended and
popularized by Peggy McIntosh in 1988. In “White privilege: Unpacking
the Invisible Knapsack,” McIntosh (1990) wrote that in her role as a
feminist and educator she “realized the extent to which men work from a
base of unacknowledged privilege, I understood that much of their
oppressiveness was unconscious” and that insight led her to “count the
ways in which I enjoy unearned skin privilege.” She spoke of privilege
as something that is conferred, by birth or luck. As such, it is an
unearned power (to dominate) rather than an earned strength. She
also distinguished between privileges “not worth having” (like being
able to ignore those less powerful) and those that are “worth having”
and that everyone should enjoy (like non-discrimination when buying a
home). She then enumerated fifty “daily effects of white privilege,”
including being able to “turn on the television or open to the front
page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.” Her
self-confessional listing has since been replicated, such as in Jonthan
McIntosh’s (no relation) recent essay (and subsequent YouTube video)
“Playing with Privilege: The Invisible Benefits of Gaming While Male”
(2014b, 2014a). In addition to the confessional format of the essay, the
essay was influential for its (1) use of metaphor (i.e., “like an
invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions”), (2) recognition
that privileges of color, class, and gender are “intricately
intertwined” (now often spoken of as “intersectionalism”), and (3)
linking it to “the myth of meritocracy.” On the latter point, she wrote
that because of privilege “this is not such a free country; one’s life is not
what one makes it; many doors open for certain people through no virtues
of their own.”

As McIntosh’s essay become widely known, other scholars and educators
came to reflect on the work’s shortcomings. Lewis Gordon (2004: 175)
argued that much of what McIntosh listed were actually human rights and
“as such, the term ‘privilege’ runs counter to their normative import
since such rights are by definition imperatives that apply to and for
all human beings.” Lawrence Blum (2008) offered a “mild critique” via
additional distinctions. He wrote that a spared injustice is a harm
avoided (e.g., not being subject to stop-and-frisk policing). An unjust
enrichment is a benefit resulting from harm to others (e.g., better
education favors one in the job market relative to others). And a
non-injustice-related privilege is a benefit with no harm; this could
include linguistic or cultural privileges (e.g., a posh accent). Blum’s
other concerns about privilege included “its inadequate exploration of
the actual structures of racial inequality, its tendency to deny or
downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the
major racial groups, and its overly narrow implied political project
that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to
the cause of racial justice” (p. 320). This latter point, and a critique
of the confessional format, was echoed by a collective of teachers
(Jensmire et al., 2013) and the challenges of teaching about privilege
was the topic of an edited collection in the same year (Case, 2013).

Gordon L (2004) Critical reflections on three popular tropes in the
study of Whiteness. Yancy G (ed.), What White Looks Like:
African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question, New York:
Routledge.